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Diabetics: Embrace These Healthy Habits To Support Your Vascular Health
Your circulatory system provides oxygen and other nutrients to your entire body, as well as removes waste products for excretion. If any part of this vast network of organs, arteries, and veins becomes damaged, it can have wide-reaching effects.
Diabetes is a disease characterized by high blood sugar levels, where either the pancreas doesn’t produce enough of the hormone insulin to convert sugar to useful energy for the cells, or the cells become resistant to insulin’s effects. Consistently high blood sugar can adversely impact the circulatory system, linking diabetes with vascular health.
At Heart Vascular & Leg Center in Bakersfield, California, our team of vascular experts understands that diabetes and vascular disease both increase your risk of foot-related complications, thereby necessitating proper foot care to help manage the conditions. Here are healthy habits to embrace that will support your diabetic and vascular well-being.
Understanding diabetes
To understand how diabetes affects vascular health, it’s first important to understand the disease itself. There are a number of forms of diabetes, but the two primary forms are:
1. Type 1 diabetes
Type 1 is an autoimmune disease, meaning your body attacks itself. In this case, it mistakenly attacks the beta cells in the pancreas and destroys their ability to produce insulin. This form is usually diagnosed in children — it was once known as “juvenile diabetes” — but it can develop at any age. Type 1 diabetics need to take insulin every day, making them “insulin-dependent.”
2. Type 2 diabetes
Up to 95% of diabetics have type 2, a condition where the pancreas either doesn’t produce enough insulin for the body’s needs, or cells don’t respond to the hormone, elevating sugar levels in the blood. Historically, type 2 was mostly seen in middle-aged and older people. However, “insulin-resistant diabetes” is becoming more prevalent in younger populations, who are becoming increasingly sedentary, overweight, and eating an unhealthy diet, all risks for the condition.
Diabetes’s high sugar levels damage the peripheral nervous system, leading to diabetic neuropathy, where you lose sensation in your lower limbs and feet. That means you might not feel a cut on your foot or chafing shoes, which can easily ulcerate and become infected.
The diabetes-vascular health connection
In addition to nerves, diabetes also damages your circulatory system, specifically irritating and roughening the inner linings of arteries big and small. The arteries respond by building up a layer of plaque, a mix of fats, proteins, and cellular debris, that hardens and narrows the diameter of the conduit. This makes it harder for the heart to pump out enough blood for the body’s needs, and blood flow decreases to the eyes, kidneys, legs, and feet, causing problems in each area.
This condition is known as atherosclerosis, aka hardening of the arteries. When it affects the legs and feet, it’s called peripheral arterial disease (PAD). Untreated PAD can lead to heart attacks, stroke, gangrene (tissue necrosis), and amputation, but on the other hand, high blood sugar can increase PAD’s effects and make it harder to treat. It’s something of a Catch-22.
In addition, as a result of high sugar levels, the blood flow to your feet may decrease to the point where your tissue dries out and your skin cracks, opening you up to the risk of a diabetic foot ulcer and serious infection, much like venous ulcers that stem from venous insufficiency (sluggish blood flow in the veins).
Embrace these healthy habits to support your vascular health
If you have diabetes, the #1 thing you can do to protect your vascular and overall health is to get your blood sugar under control, and the #2 thing is to embrace diabetic foot care. Here are some habits to adopt, especially if you’ve developed neuropathy:
- Inspect feet twice a day: look for bruises, blisters, cuts, redness, swelling, bunions, and hammertoes
- Wash your feet every day: always use lukewarm water, as hot water can scald
- Blot your feet dry: make sure to get between all your toes
- Moisturize legs and feet: prevents skin cracking; don’t moisturize between toes, as may lead to fungal infection
- Cut toenails straight across, not angled; be careful of cutting the skin
- Don’t treat wounds yourself: come in for professional treatment
- Wear clean, dry socks; change if get wet
- Wear diabetic socks: extra cushioning, higher than the ankle, no elastic tops, and repel moisture
- Wear diabetic shoes: extra toe room, deep cushioning, no seams to rub
- Never walk barefoot
- Get professional foot exams: prevent rather than treat
If you’ve got diabetes, your feet need extra attention, and Heart Vascular & Leg Center provides the diabetic foot care you need to keep all parts of you healthy. Give our office a call at 661-230-9659 to set up a consultation with one of our vascular specialists, or book online with us today.
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